What You Need To Know About The Revised Statutory Guidance
Everyone who comes into contact with children and their families has a role to play in safeguarding children. Schools and colleges form part of the wider safeguarding system which includes social care, the police, health services and other services to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm.
School and college staff are particularly important as they are in a position to identify concerns early and provide help for children, to prevent concerns from escalating. There are a number of new points raised in the updated statutory guidance which settings need to be aware of.
Outline of the Primary Changes in the Revised Statutory Guidance:
- All staff should have their training regularly updated, but at least annually. If you and your staff have recently completed child protection training, you do not need to worry that it is defunct and immediately re-train, an annual update is all that is required.
- Schools must put in place mechanisms to assist staff to understand and discharge their duties.
- As before, all staff should read and understand Part One of the guidance. The revised guidance also says that if staff work directly with children they should also read Annex A (which describes a list of other harms to children such as so-called Honour-based violence, gang violence etc.)
- Other safeguarding topics that were not explicit in the previous version are now explicit. This includes topics such as peer-on-peer abuse, so-called honour-based violence, understanding the additional safeguarding vulnerabilities of learners with ‘special educational needs and disabilities’ (SEND).
- There is a greater focus on children requiring ‘Early Help’ and staff should be able to identify children who would benefit from it. Early help is exactly what it says – to intervene early with remedial actions to help prevent concerns about children, escalating into urgent child protection issues.
- Online safety is now part of safeguarding. Schools do filter what comes into school, but the revised guidance says that filtering and monitoring should be in place (by this, they mean a proactive monitoring regime). It also says that schools, however, should not ‘over-block’ in a way that would impact learning.
- The revised guidance also references the NSPCC Whistleblowing helpline (for those who are worried about the way safeguarding is being handled in school or concerns are not being taken seriously).
- There is a greater focus on the fact that children ‘should be taught about safeguarding as part of providing a broad and balanced curriculum’.
The above changes to guidance have now been incorporated into all EduCare’s Child Protection safeguarding courses.
If you would like to know more about our training packages then please complete the form in the contact us page or call us on 01926 436 211.
Return to news